The time taken for rollovers and contributions is set to drop from up to one month down to less than three days due to an e-commerce pilot with the Industry Funds Forum and Cuscal.

The 12-month IFF pilot is set to go on Saturday 19 June and includes REST, Sunsuper, Statewide, Health Super, and a government fund, with a second group of funds set to join in September.

Other retail and public sector funds, as well as industry funds, are also being invited to join the IFF pilot.

Cuscal, which processes more than 100 million e-banking transactions yearly, was given a Request For Proposal by IFF in mid-2009, and has been working on the project since then.

Adrian Lovney (pictured), Cuscal’s general manager, said the main challenge has been “to ensure the solution is consistent with the swimEC stanadards as they relate to rollovers, so it’s an open system.

“Another challenge has been to ensure the platform meets future participants’ needs, and can deliver a solution for SMSFs,” he said.

The e-commerce pilot will:

• Reduce the time to process rollovers and contributions from up to one month to fewer than three days on average, significantly reducing the non-investment period for members
• Reduce operational costs through an electronic system as opposed to manual, cheque-based systems

• Improve data collection and integrity, with standard forms and/or limitless data fields together with payments, including name, date of birth, tax file number, and email address.

Cuscal’s ClickSuper e-commerce platform incorporates technology patented by Payment Adviser, and facilitates the online transfer of funds and matches payment data with the payment itself.

Francis Cox, of Industry Funds Forum, said the cost of transferring an account would fall from about $5 to 20 cents. Cox, who is also general manager of IT at Sunsuper, said the saving would be “very significant” for Sunsuper.